Archives for: August 2011, 06

08/06/11

Permalink 01:04:34 pm, by fourth, 184 words, 1708 views   English (US)
Categories: General

NC: Consent obtained under threat to get a warrant that would have been granted anyway was not coerced

“Where officers advised defendant that if he did not consent to giving oral swabs and surrendering certain items of clothing that they would detain him until they obtained a search warrant, this did not negate defendant’s voluntary consent to the seizure of those items.” State v. McMillan, 2011 N.C. App. LEXIS 1625 (August 2, 2011).*

Defendant preserved her argument that her purse could not be searched under the search warrant in the trial court, and the court of appeals erred on that score, but she loses on the merits of the argument because the warrant covered her purse found inside the house. State v. Walker, 350 Ore. 540, 258 P.3d 1228 (2011), affg 234 Ore. App. 596, 229 P.3d 606 (2010).*

Arrest for being a person in suspicious place was valid and with probable cause because defendant was a suspect in a shooting incident. Cardella v. State, 2010 Tex. App. LEXIS 7218 (Tex.App.—San Antonio September 1, 2010), Delivered, Released for Publication May 27, 2011, petition for discretionary review dismd Cardella v. State, 2011 Tex. Crim. App. Unpub. LEXIS 453 (Tex. Crim. App., Jan. 12, 2011), Petition for discretionary review refused by In re Cardella, 2011 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 364 (Tex. Crim. App., Mar. 9, 2011).*

Permalink 12:38:03 pm, by fourth, 325 words, 1867 views   English (US)
Categories: General

ID: Prosecutor's closing argument comment on refusal of consent was fundamental error

Prosecutor’s comment in closing argument on defendant’s exercise of his right to refuse consent was prosecutorial misconduct and required reversal of the conviction. It is a fundamental error. State v. Betancourt, 151 Idaho 635, 262 P.3d 278 (2011):

The state asserts that Betancourt has failed to demonstrate the second prong of the fundamental error test because the error is not clear from a review of the record. Specifically, the state argues that the prosecutor’s comments are ambiguous, at best, and could not be considered to be plain error. However, the prosecutor’s statement that Betancourt “did not want those troopers to search that vehicle” is clearly a comment on Betancourt’s statements in the video refusing to consent to a search. Similarly, the prosecutor’s statements during rebuttal also refer to Betancourt’s concern about keeping the officers out of the vehicle. While the prosecutor focused on Betancourt’s overall demeanor during the stop, it is plain from a review of the record that the prosecutor also requested that the jury pay particular attention to Betancourt’s refusal to allow the search as evidence of his knowledge of methamphetamine in the car. Therefore, the second prong of Perry has also been established.

Under the third prong of Perry, in order to conclude that the prosecutor’s comments constituted fundamental error, the defendant must demonstrate that there is a reasonable possibility that the impermissible comments affected the outcome of the trial. Perry, 150 Idaho at 226, 245 P.3d at 978. As mentioned above, in order to prove possession of a controlled substance, the state must prove that the defendant has such dominion and control over the substance to establish constructive possession. Segovia, 93 Idaho at 598, 468 P.2d at 664. A sufficient showing of a nexus between the accused and the controlled substance is central to this requirement. Fairchild, 121 Idaho at 969, 829 P.2d at 559. Further, knowledge of the existence of controlled substances may be inferred through circumstances. Clayton, 101 Idaho at 16, 607 P.2d at 1070.

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"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't."
—Me

"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).

"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence."
Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).

Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment.
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).

"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today."
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).

"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property."
Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)

"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment."
United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)

"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).

"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable."
Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)

"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)

“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)

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United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)

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"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
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